Greenstorm's Journal

One month till solstice. The cool overcast with daily twenty minutes of hail and cool wet breezes drifting into slight warmth of sunshine has given way to the big sun. The big sun lives everywhere, all the time, and except in stone-walled basements lined with blackout cloth it is inescapable. Up in the morning, out into the garden at seven, and the big sun is high already and working to warm the day into real heat. I come in by ten-thirty with a sunburn on my cheeks despite long sleeves and hat and sunglasses. Up late the sun is wildly energetic; at dinnertime Tucker calls from the dark of Virginia and says, "the sun's still up there, isn't it?" and indeed it is, it's only starting to consider leaving its flamboyant afternoon party to even glance at the horizon. At ten it is dark, mostly, with lingering blue along the horizon, but that won't last long. There have been summers I've not seen dark for months. Staying up on solstice the sun does go below the horizon but the horizon nver surrenders its light; deep twilight is as far as it gets.

One month till solstice and my favas, soaked, are in the ground late. One tiller on the way from the factory and the other in the shop, both unexpected delays, and my favas were soaked so there was no putting them back for next year. I took the mattock and fork to the upper field and put them in, roughly 12 x 14, packed much tighter than I was expecting because I was trying to minimize the labour. No barley went in the mix, though I will definitely put in alyssum and calendula or borage up there. This was half what I grew last year, the mix of Lofthouse and Russian Black, and half new genes: Ianto's return, Aprovecho select, sweet Loraine, sunshine coast, Montana Rainbow, Frog Island, Can Dou, perhaps some others I'm not bringing to mind. My saved seeds germinated well. The soil was unexpectedly sandy up there, probably from the old riding ring, with random rocks of all sizes. We will see how they do.

One month till solstice and I have a weekend to myself, staying up till midnight making meatloaf and then out at seven to plant seeds and back in before noon. Now I'm sorting my corns in preparation for planting, like any autistic person with their collection, and thinking about both how happy that makes me and how much I really do hide these behaviours. The distinction between things no one else talks about because no one else does them, and things no one else talks about because we all do them but they're private, that's the space where neurodivergence hides.

One month till solstice and I am hiding from the sun in my also-sunny livingroom like a bowlfull of light and writing until the still aggressively sunny evening.